Merle Kennedy

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Don't blame yourself if Nemesis makes virtually no sense to you. It's not your fault. It really does make minimal sense. In the near future (Japan and the U.S. have "merged"), Olivier Gruner plays a half-man half-machine cop who ends up leaving the LAPD and taking a kind of bounty hunter job for his old employers. Mass hysteria, explosions, and washed-out "futuristic" footage ensue. The acting is appalling, but the low-budget special effects do manage to impress from time to time.

How refreshing, after the mild thrills of movies like Final Destination 2 and Wrong Turn, to watch a horror movie with some inner life. It's easy to describe Lucky McKee's May in terms of its similarities to other films; it owes a lot to Brian DePalma's Carrie (lead actress Angela Bettis even played Carrie in the TV-movie redo), with its meek anti-heroine and eventual havoc. To that end, it also brings to mind the Willard remake from earlier this year, with its darkly funny approach to a social outcast, and even bears a passing, coincidental resemblance to sort of a horror version of 2002's Secretary. But May is its own film, made with confidence and skill.

The title character (Bettis) does not have telekinetic powers or a special relationship with rats, although she does work as a vet's assistant. She is an awkward, lonely girl; we see in flashbacks that she was rejected as a child: By other children, because of her lazy eye (and resulting eyepatch); and by her parents, through general indifference and for reasons not entirely known. We see her mother present May with a doll on her birthday, but won't let May take it out of the box, not wanting to "ruin" it; years later, the doll is May's only friend.